The president of the University of Windsor’s faculty association says he’s been taken aback by the school’s move to set a lockout date of July 3.

“It’s hard to speculate exactly what it is the employer is thinking,” said Brian Brown, president of the Windsor University Faculty Association.

The university requested and was granted a no-board report, which puts the administration in a legal lock-out position at 12:01 a.m. on July 3. The announcement was made on the Daily News section of the school’s website.

“We requested it so the conciliator could become a mediator … in an effort to move the negotiations along much quicker,” said Holly Ward, spokeswoman for the university administration. Ward said university president Alan Wildeman’s goal is to get a new agreement in place “as soon as possible” without the adverse effects that would come with a strike or work stoppage.

The Daily News announcement also states that the faculty association would be in a legal strike position on the same date, but Brown said that’s not the case.

“We can’t go on strike because we haven’t taken a strike vote yet and we have no intention at this time to take a strike vote,” said Brown, who represents 850 academic staff including faculty, librarians and sessional instructors.

“As far as the strategy by the administration, as far as making the moves they have, conciliation, no-board, the threat of a lockout is very unusual, especially in the university sector.”

Brown said there has never been a case in the province of Ontario where a university locked out its faculty.

“This would be a first,” said Brown. “So it is very unusual.”

Brown said he was under the impression the talks were moving along well.

“These have been unusual negotiations considering how they started with the administration requesting conciliation prior to even exchanging proposals and then requesting a no-board last week, which again was unusual considering we were still at the table talking and we were working with the mediator and contract talks had not stalled at all,” said Brown.

“We were continuing negotiating.”

The no-board means the conciliation officer now becomes a mediator leading up to the expiration of the current contract on June 30.

Mediation sessions are scheduled for Friday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

Last fall, the school year got off to a rough start with a month-long strike by members of CUPE Local 1393, representing support workers, who struck over job security, pay equity and bumping rights.

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Essex MP Jeff Watson confirmed Saturday that the federally-owned Paul Martin Building will be sold to the city for $1 and converted into a law school building for the University Windsor, as previously reported by The Windsor Star.